


Colder than Cold

by gonergone



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Gen, Trick or Treat: Trick, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-29 07:49:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16259840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gonergone/pseuds/gonergone
Summary: AU where vampires have taken over the crew on Terror and Erebus.





	Colder than Cold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skazka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skazka/gifts).



In the mornings when she opened her eyes the sun was still low, and in the dim light and quiet she could almost believe she was alone, and then he would shift slightly in his cocoon of restraining skins and she would feel the fear return, pressing everywhere until she could barely breathe.

The man who called himself Crozier, who had called himself - and still called himself, when he remembered who he was - friend, lay with his back to the wall, as far from the fire and the fur-covered doorway as he could get. Sometimes, when the madness seemed to leave his eyes, he would creep forward and bend toward the warmth with the softest of sighs, but he would always, always lose himself again and retreat from the heat and the light, clawing his way back into what shadows he could find.

His hands were bound, of course, with the thick strips of fabric that he'd thrust at her when she'd found him marooned on the ice, but she suspected that it didn't really matter. If he ever truly lost his struggle with the thing inside him, he'd kill her easily, bound hands or no. 

She supposed they were both just waiting for that to happen.

"You should just kill me," he told her one day, and she knew he was right but she shook her head anyway, pushing the carved stone with the seal's offal still steaming in the air toward him. His words were slurred, his voice weak and cracked, though that was more on account of the sunlight reflecting off the snow outside than his true state. Once darkness fell he'd be stronger, and she'd need to arm herself against him. Him, and the others.

That was coming soon enough: it was still summer, the time of relative abundance, when the sun shone nearly all the time, but it was already starting to dip under the horizon earlier and earlier, and she knew that soon enough it would disappear for months, and then they'd both be out of time.

"There is so much darkness," he told her, "in here," and motioned toward the side of his head. Then he said much in the tongue she didn't know, the words all sharp edges. His eyes were red tinged, but still mostly human. Over the past six weeks she'd learned to read every tiny nuance in those eyes, the monster and the man. 

Inside he watched her with a hungry gaze that unnerved her more than just about anything, so she retreated outside as much as she could, always listening for whatever sounds he may make, always waiting for the moment when he'd stop making any sounds at all, though it never came. 

Sometimes, as they both watched the sunlight leak out of the sky and his strength came back, he would tell her things about himself. She mostly wished he wouldn't; knowing him as a human being was just going to make things more difficult later on, but she had been alone for so long that hearing another voice was pleasant. Even if it was hard.

"Back home, back…where I'm from, I was sent away to school." He struggled to find the right word briefly. "I was never terribly popular, and when I was young I cared quite a lot about that. I cared quite a lot about a lot of things, then. Funny to think that now. Anyway, I did whatever I could think of to make the other boys like me, and not a single thing ever worked." He made a sharp, mocking noise, then sighed. "More fool me. By the time I got on to the Terror I'd got over trying to make people like me, and I can't help thinking that maybe everything would've been different if I had just tried a bit harder. Just a bit. If I could've just… tried." He started coughing and didn't stop for several moments, blood staining his lips when he finally went on. "And now here I am, and if I had any bravery left in me at all, I would crawl right out into the sun and burn to death like the others." He shut his eyes and shook his head. "It seems I am never able to be the man I should be at the right time. You should leave me. You should leave me and go back to your people." He coughed again, once, and his eyelids fluttered. "Back where it's safe."

She had hesitated to leave when she first found him because leaving him would be an absolute death sentence, and she couldn't quite bring herself to do that, even though she knew it would be the best thing for them both, and now summer was almost over and she had hesitated too long.

*****

She waited until the sun was fully risen before walking across the ice to the ships, still caught in their prison on the pack, and by the time she arrived the sun was high in the sky, blinding off the snow. The pack hadn't broken for the second summer in a row, and now that summer was nearly over she knew it wouldn't. It was unlikely the ships would be crushed by the ice or allowed to sink under it, and she didn't think she could get near enough to try to burn them, not with so many shadows lurking.

The shadows were the problem. She could see movement in them that had nothing to do with the wind, movement and the glint of red, and she knew they were still there, that the strong were eating the weak while they were trapped by the light, but the light was already fading fast.

She knew that once the sun disappeared for winter they would come for her, come for them both, and if she was lucky they would only kill her. 

She started back for her camp and told her self that the sounds of boots on the ice were just the wind.


End file.
